UK psychologist professor John Read wrote an eloquent article a month ago on the Mad in America website about ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) court cases. He has published surveys of ECT patients and family members and is currently involved as an expert witness in US court cases.
The culprits are mostly men whereas the victims are mostly women and the elderly. I interviewed John two years ago about why electroshock will likely become abandoned. It spurred his interest in ECT when he, as a young psychologist, witnessed a patient being killed by ECT on the table and that the death was covered up subsequently.
Excerpts from this interview are included in our documentary film, “The Illusion of Psychiatry,” which had world premiere in Norway two days ago and will be made freely available later when we have made the last corrections and added English subtitles.
John mentions a European review of ECT usage, prepublished in July as an accepted manuscript of 50 pages. It is authored by 20 ECT champions, and the first is Dr Richard Braithwaite, Chair of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Committee on ECT.
The review’s abstract is horribly misleading. The first sentence is: “Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a safe and effective medical treatment” and the Conclusions start with: ”Although the optimal rate of use is unknown, widely differing rates across European nations suggest ECT is underused in some high-income countries, depriving patients of vital medical care.” The most recent data in the review show that people in Sweden and Denmark are about 140 times more likely than people in Italy to be given ECT.
I cannot recall a single review of usage of psychiatric drugs or ECT in various countries conducted by leading psychiatrists that conclude that a treatment is used too much in some countries. It is always the opposite. There is not much difference between the psychiatric guild and a drug company. It is about harming people for money.
